


how to strip ourselves like that

by Anonymous



Category: The Firm (TV)
Genre: Bad Guys Made Them Do It, Bitterness, Communication Failure, Complicated Relationships, Confrontations, Developing Relationship, Dubiously Consensual Blow Jobs, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Extremely Dubious Consent, Gunplay, Internalized Homophobia, Kidnapping, Kissing, M/M, Post-Canon, Rescue, Uneasy Allies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-30
Updated: 2021-01-30
Packaged: 2021-03-16 18:27:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29086833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Mitch blinked, once and then again, just in case. The look on Louis's face didn't change."I'm sorry, what?""You need to get closer to Morolto," Louis repeated.
Relationships: Mitch McDeere/Joey Morolto Jr.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 3
Collections: Five Figure Fanwork Exchange 2020





	how to strip ourselves like that

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sandrine Shaw (Sandrine)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sandrine/gifts).



> ♥
> 
> This is good old-fashioned "bad guys make them do it", which only counts as dubcon because the character who appears not to want it actually just hates how much he wants it. There's only a little bit of gunplay; I TRIED THOUGH. The title is borrowed from the poem "[A Pornography](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53684/a-pornography)" by Paisley Rekdal, because how was I supposed to resist that?

Mitch blinked, once and then again, just in case. The look on Louis's face didn't change.

"I'm sorry, what?"

"You need to get closer to Morolto," Louis repeated, level. "Look, I get it. I don't like it either. But right now, the best thing you can do—for yourself, for us, and for this investigation—is get as deep in Morolto's business as you can. He's already put you under his protection, he's already trying to treat you like his personal lawyer. Let him. Work with him. Make it your job, make it your life. Make it look like every commitment you've got in this world is tied up in Joey Morolto, Jr."

"Louis—"

"This situation, us and the FBI, Morolto and the Russians—it's a powder keg, Mitch, just waiting to go off, and we don't want anybody dropping a match in the mix. Not yet. We need to move carefully. We need to be ready. We need time to gather evidence, figure out how high up this goes and how many other Kurylenkos might be out there getting away with murder." He stopped and sighed a little through his nose, rubbing a hand across his mouth. Mitch wasn't feeling particularly charitable, childishly didn't want to care; but Louis looked tired. "Which means we can't do anything that would provoke the FBI or Karpov into coming at us. You poking around, in and out of my office all the time—that's an issue. That's something they're going to know they need to keep an eye on, something that could be a case getting built. But you poking around because you're working for Morolto? They'll expect that. Morolto's already on their radar; he's a competitor for the Russians' territory, moving in on DC the way he has, and he's pissed that they set up his guy. But he's not a department of the federal government."

Mitch squeezed his eyes shut. It made sense. He just didn't want it to. He just didn't want to admit that it did, because that meant doing what Louis had told him to do.

He didn't know where the hell he stood with Joey anymore. Everything had turned on its head, one piece at a time—Patrick turning out to be innocent after all, which meant some part of Mitch suddenly couldn't stand the idea of losing the goddamn case; saving Joey's fucking life from that drive-by, as if Mitch hadn't already been tangled up with him enough; and now this. Learning the FBI was in on it, or at least part of the FBI. Mitch's own sense of stubborn justice wouldn't put up with letting an actual murderer walk while his client got blamed, even if his client was going to be Joey Morolto's next consigliere. And that meant he was on Joey's side. Not because Joey was forcing him to be, not because Joey had a metaphorical gun to his head—or a physical one, for that matter. Because he'd put himself there and he couldn't figure out how to walk away anymore.

It was unsettling. It was disorienting. And he could feel in his bones that doing this, listening to Louis, _deliberately_ making it worse, was dangerous as hell.

"Hey," Louis said, gentler now. "We're all in on this, Mitch. Abby and Claire are safe, and they're going to stay that way. I'm not hanging you out to dry. That's not going to happen."

"Yeah," Mitch made himself say. "Yeah, Louis, I know."

And that was true, too. He didn't know where Abby and Claire were; Louis hadn't told him, and he hadn't asked. He knew better. Coming up on two months now, and if Louis said they were still secure, then they were—the Russians hadn't gone after them, didn't even seem to be looking.

It was better that way.

He'd trusted Louis with them, and he trusted Louis with himself. And if Louis said that the best thing Mitch could do was make nice with Joey, draw their mutual orbit even tighter, then Mitch had to believe it.

"Okay," he said aloud. "All right. I'll—talk to Joey."

Fantastic. As if his life hadn't been a big enough mess already.

He couldn't talk to Joey without talking to Ray and Tammy first.

He'd tried to get them to leave when Abby and Claire had. He'd done the best he could. But Abby and Claire had been easy, relatively speaking. Claire was just a kid, and she needed her mother; that one had been self-evident to everybody, including Abby. Besides, Abby and Mitch had already been as good as separated, three-quarters of the way to a divorce, by then. Mitch hadn't exactly had to muster his most compelling closing arguments.

Ray and Tammy, on the other hand, were adults, and adults who'd insisted they could make their own choices. It was dangerous—well, it had already been dangerous, and unless every single thing about Mitch's personality and the way he made decisions was about to turn inside-out, it was going to keep being dangerous. Ray understood that. Ray understood that better than Mitch did, he'd asserted, because he was the one who knew how this worked, how each step down the slippery slope took you futher than you'd meant it to, straight to the bottom. Mitch was the idiot who kept calling Mr. Morolto "Joey" right to his face; Ray clearly couldn't afford to leave him alone for five minutes, never mind cross state lines without him.

And Tammy wasn't going anywhere without Ray. She'd smiled at Mitch when she'd said it, chucked him under the chin with play-acted fondness to cover the real stuff underneath—not that she didn't care about him, she'd added blandly, considering he signed her paychecks and all, but there it was. If Ray was staying, she was staying, and that was all there was to it.

Once she got over the surprise, Mitch thought, she was going to laugh herself hoarse.

The trip back to the office was quiet. Mitch should've been planning what he was going to say to them, how he was going to say it, but his head felt useless and empty. Joey was filling all the space in it, the same way he could fill a room in person when he tried—sucking up all the attention, impossible to ignore, impossible to look away from.

By the time Mitch was standing in his own office doorway, Ray and Tammy both looking at him inquiringly, it was all he could do just to blurt it out. "We have to work for Joey."

Ray and Tammy looked at each other, and then at him.

"Aren't we already?" Ray said slowly.

"No, I mean—we have to make it look like we are."

Ray's eyebrows went up. "Don't about two dozen court reporters already have you guys shaking hands? We're working his case, he's got his guys on us, and oh, yeah, the Russians kidnapped you and threatened to toss your body into a quarry, which had to have been intended to, among other things, send him a message. In what universe have we not very, very obviously taken Joey Morolto on as a client?"

God. Ray was going to make him say it. He didn't want to have to; but it was the only thing left that he could think of that would help, and they needed to take this seriously.

"We have to say yes," Mitch said.

"We have to—what?" Ray said.

Tammy was looking at him curiously, a little uncertainly, starting to rise off the couch like she wanted to come over and take his hand, maybe pat the back of it a few times. "Are you all right, Mitch?"

"Yeah, you hit your head or something?" Ray said.

Tammy shot him a look, mouth pursed, that said that wasn't what she'd meant by the question, and also he could stop helping.

"Hey, come on, give me a break," Ray protested. "It's been, what, six weeks now that Morolto's been asking us very, _very_ nicely to consider moving this whole operation to the floor above the restaurant. I was the one who said we ought to consider it, before we started waking up with horse heads in our beds—and _you_ ," he added, pointing an accusing finger at Mitch, "were the one who said no."

"I know I did."

"Like fifteen times, you said no," Ray emphasized.

Mitch sighed. His head, his jaw, felt tense; not a headache yet, but the shadow of one creeping closer. "And I still think it was the right call. But now we have to say yes."

He laid it out for them, the same way Louis had laid it out for him. That they needed to keep attention off the Marshals, and it was already on Joey—it wasn't like it would hurt anything if it stayed there.

And as long as he was trying to make a point, well. Ray wasn't wrong: Joey _had_ asked, over and over and over again, in that honey-soaked sharp-edged way that wasn't really asking at all. Mitch had started to think he got some kind of a kick out of it—that everybody else in the world probably had the sense to go along with him when he talked like that, but not Mitch, and the sheer thrilling unfamiliarity of being turned down kept him coming back for more.

It had gotten to the point where he'd even started trying to reason with Mitch, instead of just issuing ultimatums disguised by a question mark. Insisting that security would be better—that his guys wouldn't be spread so thin, trying to cover Mitch and Ray and Tammy, if they were working out of one of Joey's buildings instead of halfway across town. That Mitch would have everything he needed, a nicer office and no rent to pay for the use of it, and Tammy and Ray would be allowed to come and go freely; that there was no good reason to say no.

He'd even almost been right. It wasn't like it made that big a difference anymore—Mitch was already working for Joey, already taking Joey's money, already in this up to his neck. If he had somehow managed not to know it before, that day at the quarry would have proven it to him with room to spare.

But Mitch had clung to it anyway, the ability to refuse Joey this one final thing. The ability to draw a line _somewhere_ , even if it was coming far too late to do him any good. He might have given up half his life for Joey, one piece at a time; but by god, he wasn't about to make Joey his landlord.

That didn't mean Joey's arguments hadn't made sense, though. It felt strange to turn around and pick them up and use them. But Mitch had done worse to win a case.

"And you really think this is a good idea," Tammy said, when he was done.

"I don't know if I'd go that far," Mitch said dryly. "But I don't think we can do this without the Marshals, not when the FBI is involved. And if Louis says the best way to help them is to take advantage of the cover Joey can give us, then we'd better do it."

"Told you to consider it," Ray said, sage, shaking his head.

But Mitch wasn't about to let himself get distracted by a lob like that. "Listen," he said, "I'm already on Karpov's radar. We know that for sure. But the two of you—"

"If you're about to end that sentence the way I think you're about to end that sentence," Tammy interrupted, "you can save it."

She didn't look uncertain anymore. She was making a stern, disapproving face instead, mouth pressed into a judgmental moue.

"Tammy," Mitch tried.

"No," she said. "Forget it. If you and your bad ideas were enough to get rid of us, we'd already be on the other side of the country."

"Thanks," Mitch said. "I think."

"She's right," Ray told him, and he rose to his feet, rounded the coffee table and reached out to squeeze Mitch's shoulder. "You're going to have to do better than that if you want to shake us."

His tone was light, mocking. But his gaze was steady, serious, his face grave, and it wasn't hard to understand what he was really saying.

"Thanks," Mitch said again, softer, meaning it; and he wrapped a hand around Ray's wrist and squeezed back.

So that was that. Now he just had to tell Joey.

He took the easy way out, and called.

He'd have to face Joey sooner or later. But he was allowed to ease himself into it by conceding to the phone first—he was allowed to practice saying it without having to look Joey in the eye while he did.

Joey was already demanding enough. Mitch actually surrendering ground to him was just going to make him worse, and Mitch was about to have to spend a hell of a lot more time in his immediate vicinity.

The balance had already started to shift between them in a way that left Mitch feeling like he didn't know where he stood; with Karpov and the FBI, with Joey _protecting_ him. He'd started out hoping he could make it through this and come out the other side clean, or at least close to it—prove Patrick innocent, hold Joey to his word, and then he'd be free to wash his hands of everything that had anything to do with the Moroltos, at last.

But now that glimmer of daylight, that light at the end of the tunnel, was more of a mirage than anything. When Russian crime lords and the FBI both probably had you pretty high on a list of known associates of Joey Morolto, there wasn't a lot short of plastic surgery, a name change, and a permanent move to New Zealand that was going to break that connection for you. Even Witness Protection had limits, especially for somebody who'd gone into it and then come back out of it once already. The idea that he might actually end up relying on Joey to keep him safe, when he'd blown his chance with the US Marshals Service, was disorienting as hell.

And now he was about to turn the whole thing inside out. Through all of this, every single thing that had happened since the moment he'd looked up and realized who was standing in his office doorway, in a weird backwards way he'd been able to count on Joey. He pushed, Joey pushed back. He tried to draw away, and Joey dragged him back in. Over and over and over. It was funny, almost: just about everything else in Mitch's life, he had to grab after. He had to cling as hard as he could, put every ounce of himself into it, work and work and work to hold on, and sometimes it still didn't stick. The job he'd thought he'd had when he was working at Bendini, Lambert & Locke; Abby, and then Claire; years and years of that fragile false bubble of a life they'd had in Witness Protection; everything he'd believed he was agreeing to in consulting for Kinross & Clark.

But it wasn't like that with Joey, because Joey was the one hanging on to Mitch. _I've been thinking about this moment since I was fifteen years old._ Joey was the one trying to claw his way in, doing every single thing he could think of to tangle Mitch up even a fraction tighter. And whatever the balance was that they'd managed to achieve between them, that was what it was based on.

Which meant that this—Mitch giving in, knuckling under—was going to throw it right out of whack, if anything could.

He waited through four rings, which felt like about forty, before Joey picked up. Which was probably a deliberate effort on Joey's part to be as irritating as possible, just because he knew it was Mitch on the other end of the line.

"Why, Mitch," Joey murmured, in a tone that dripped false pleasure. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

Mitch drew a slow breath, let it out, and then closed his eyes and made himself say it: "Is the offer still open?"

Joey's end of the line went utterly silent, for one long stretching beat. And then Joey made a small satisfied sound, half-muffled, in the back of his throat, and said, "Mm, I'm afraid you're going to have to be a bit more specific. Which one?"

Jesus. "The office," Mitch bit out. "Upstairs."

"Oh, of course," Joey said warmly. "I'm sure we can come to some kind of agreement."

"Joey—"

"Here's the price, Mitch. I won't ask much. Just tell me one thing: what changed your mind?"

Mitch felt a strange lurch, equally inexplicable urges briefly tugging him in opposite directions. Hearing the question in and of itself, part of him was vindictively pleased, to think about telling Joey it was nothing he'd done at all—that he had Louis to thank for it, that Joey himself still couldn't get a single concession out of Mitch without a threat or a gun or both.

But there was something in Joey's tone, a sincere and intrigued curiosity he hadn't quite managed to paper over with smugness, that made giving him the true answer feel almost unkind.

Which was stupid. Impossibly stupid. As if Joey honestly cared that much—as if Mitch had any meaningful power to hurt him.

Besides, the whole point of this was to avoid making it look like the Marshals were involved, so Mitch could hardly go around shouting Louis's name into potentially unsecured phone lines.

"It—seemed like a good idea," Mitch said at last.

Joey was briefly quiet. "Did it," he said, not quite a question.

Mitch hadn't intended to make his answer sound leading, but Joey must've picked something out of his voice, his intonation. And of course Joey couldn't just let it lie. It wasn't in his nature. "A sufficiently convincing argument was put forward," he elaborated, and that had to be enough. Joey hadn't come around asking since last week; he'd know Mitch didn't mean anything he'd said.

Silence reigned. And then, in a rush of half-static, Joey huffed out a laugh. It sounded thin to Mitch. Tired.

"Sure," he said. "Of course. Figures. Well—building's not going anywhere. Come by anytime."

"Joey," Mitch said, and then didn't know what to put after it, what there was left to add.

"See you around, McDeere," Joey said evenly, and then there was a click and Mitch was left sitting there listening to the dial tone.

* * *

It didn't take long to make the actual move happen.

It felt like it should have. Mitch was doing one of the biggest things he'd told himself he'd never do, and it felt like it should have been harder—like his office and Joey Morolto's should have been on separate continents, because that was where they were as far as Mitch was concerned.

He still remembered the moment he'd learned Antonio Cervino was dead, the moment he'd understood what Joey had done and why. He still remembered standing in this exact goddamn building, watching a door swing open on the sight of a man tied to a chair, beaten black-and-blue and bleeding from the face. He didn't want to be party to any of it, and it made his gut roll sickeningly to think that he would be—that in a way, he already was.

But it had to be worth it. Didn't it? For the sake of figuring this out, nailing the guy who'd _actually_ murdered a woman and stuffed her into a suitcase instead of the guy who'd been framed for it; nailing whoever it was at the FBI who'd decided that didn't matter. That was bigger than Mitch trying to keep his hands clean. It was just—

It was just that he'd spent so long running from this. From literally this, this exactly: cleaning up after the Moroltos. The first time, he hadn't even known that was what he'd been doing until it was too late, hadn't even been doing it on purpose, and it had still ruined his life. It _was_ still ruining his life, right this very minute, because Joey never would've tracked him down and ruined it all over again otherwise.

And now he was walking right back up to the edge of that pit, knowing exactly how sharp the spikes were at the bottom, and he had nobody to blame for it but himself.

It had to be worth it. He'd make it worth it.

And at the absolute least, it was a really nice building.

The restaurant, the bar, took up the whole ground floor. But upwards from there, it was all offices—deceptively ordinary, except in the sense where they were a lot nicer than Mitch's office was.

Than the office that had been Mitch's was.

He'd expected Joey to be around. He'd expected Joey to come gloat, in point of fact. But it was Sal who let him in, showed him upstairs: off the staircase and the elevators, there was a real reception desk, which Tammy was going to love, and more actual offices than they could use even if Ray and the paperwork each got their own. By the look of it, at least half of everything—furniture, computers, even the goddamn filing cabinets—had already been moved in, and Mitch had no doubt there were twenty guys in dark suits on their way back to the old office right now to pick up the rest.

It was too much. It was revolting. He hated having to wonder why Joey even owned this building, how many kneecaps he'd busted extorting whatever it had taken to pay for it, or whether he'd just killed the last guy and kept it. It was impossible to imagine him willingly paying rent for it, unless maybe the money was going to one of Joey's own shell corporations, just for the sake of faking up a legitimate-looking paper trail.

But this was the best way forward. This was the best way forward, and Mitch didn't know what else to do.

So he swallowed all of that down, managed half a smile at Sal and shook his hand, and took a look around.

It was maybe an hour before Joey showed up.

Mitch didn't know he was there, at first. Then he became aware of the shape in the office doorway, and he sighed through his nose and looked up, expecting—who knew? Sal, coming around to offer him something else he could be in debt to Joey for, shortening the leash another inch. Ray, wanting to check out the new digs and remind Mitch one more time that it wouldn't kill him to be a little more polite to Joey now and then; Tammy, exulting over her enormous gleaming new desk.

But it was Joey. One arm loose, bent enough to place a casual hand in his pocket, and the other up, forearm braced against the doorframe, and he was leaning there with his body in such a conspicuously relaxed line that Mitch knew there had to be something wrong.

"Settling in all right, I hope," he murmured, one eyebrow lifted in a patronizing arch.

"Fine, thanks," Mitch said, stiff.

Joey's mouth quirked at one corner. "That well, huh?" He pushed away from the doorframe, took a step closer; his eyes on Mitch felt heavy, suffocating, like the weight of them was pushing all the air out of the room.

"Look, Joey," Mitch made himself say, because—because whatever else he was dreading about this whole arrangement, at a bare minimum it was probably going to keep Ray and Tammy safer, for as long as it lasted. That counted for something, and Mitch could acknowledge it if Joey wanted to hear it.

But Joey cut him off, lip curling into half a sneer. "You appreciate it. You're _grateful_. Six fucking weeks, and you wouldn't move an inch until Louis Coleman told you to."

Mitch closed the desk drawer he'd been going through, slow, like some part of him had decided it would be best not to make any sudden movements, and kept his eyes on Joey. There was something in the air, in the way Joey was looking at him, that reminded him of the day Joey had shot his bar certificate, and he didn't want any bullet holes in this brand-new office wall if he could help it. "Thought you'd be happy," he said warily.

"Yeah, right." Joey scoffed, a sharp scornful breath. "You got a real gift, you know that? Even when you listen, you're listening to somebody else. Even when you give in, you get to decide who you're going to give in to. Never met anybody else in my life who could make winning feel so much like losing."

"You got what you wanted," Mitch reminded him. "Don't try to tell me it matters how." As if Joey Morolto cared what the means were, as long as they got him to his ends. Please.

But Joey's whole expression shuttered at once, a muscle in his jaw jumping.

"Fuck you, McDeere," he said quietly. He stood there for a moment, silent, breathing hard; and then suddenly he laughed, a bitter huff through his nose. "At least I know you aren't going to try to turn me in to the FBI."

"Not at the moment, no," Mitch said, because it couldn't hurt to keep that card up his sleeve—to be able to remind Joey now and then that maybe someday he'd have the chance.

Joey gave him a long sharp look, eyes pale and cold. "You know, you should really consider making an effort to remember that you're only alive right now because you're useful to me. Fuck up, and I will shoot you in the head, and no one will ever find your body."

"Always a pleasure talking to you, Joey," Mitch said, flat.

And Joey stared at him blankly for a second, and then laughed—not like before, breathless and bitter, but a real laugh this time, a bark of it, short and surprised. "You really don't respect me at all, do you?"

"I'm not afraid of you, if that's what you mean. And for the record," Mitch added, "I didn't turn your father in to the FBI. Not deliberately. He trusted the wrong people, he incriminated himself—"

They were just talking. Joey was angry, sure, but Joey was almost always angry; the only thing that ever changed was how much he let it show, what he chose to cover it up with. So Mitch wasn't expecting it, wasn't prepared for it, when Joey suddenly crossed the half-filled room, four long strides, and caught him by the jacket—twisted his hands into Mitch's lapels, fabric straining where his knuckles were driving themselves into Mitch's chest, and then turned them both against the side of the desk, shoved Mitch into the edge of it.

"I," Joey bit out, "am _nothing_ like my father."

Mitch tensed up, belated, grabbing reflexively at Joey's wrists like that was going to help. He almost wanted to laugh in Joey's face—sure, yeah, Joey Morolto Jr., who'd taken over the family, stepped right into his daddy's shoes, somehow had nothing in common with Joey Morolto Sr—right. But his breath caught in the back of his throat instead, because he could see something in Joey's eyes, in the way Joey's mouth had twisted itself up like Joey was in pain, that said nothing about this was funny at all.

"You screwed him," Joey said, and he jerked Mitch closer when he did, like—like he wanted to say the words right into Mitch's mouth, like he wanted to shove them down Mitch's throat and make him choke on them. "You double-crossed him and he went to prison for the rest of his life. That's not going to happen to me. Understand? I've got you by the balls. You'd be dead without me, you _need_ me, and I am never, ever going to let you forget it."

It was probably true enough, at face value. Mitch hadn't double-crossed Morolto Sr., or at least he hadn't intended to; but he could see how it might've looked that way to—to Antonio Cervino, back when he'd been consigliere, undisputed, no Patrick Walker in the way. He could see how it might've looked that way to whoever had had to explain what had happened to a teenaged Joey Morolto Jr. who was probably never going to see his father again.

But Mitch looked at Joey, and thought about the way Joey had moved, the thing he'd seen in Joey's eyes and in the shape of his mouth, and his gut said something else.

"You're afraid of ending up like him."

As soon as the words came out of his mouth, he knew they were true. Not least because Joey had as good as told him so. He just hadn't been listening for it, at the time. He'd been focused on Patrick's case, on the jury, on dealing with Wendy Vail.

Joey's father had trusted Antonio Cervino for decades; Joey had shot him in the head and left him in a dumpster. Joey was desperate, _desperate_ , for Patrick's advice, Patrick's plan to help him take the businesses his family ran and turn them legitimate, legal, something he couldn't end up in front of a grand jury for—and the magnitude of that desperation was right there in the fact that he'd tracked Mitch down to help him get Patrick back. _Mitch_. Mitch, who he'd loathed since he was fifteen.

Or—

Or had he?

He knew what Mitch had done, at least in the broad strokes. And he'd seen firsthand what the consequences had been to his father, his family. For the first fifteen years of his life, his dad had been ruling half the eastern seaboard, unquestioned, untouched.

And then Mitch McDeere had come out of nowhere and taken all that apart without even trying.

Maybe Joey had learned something different from that lesson than Mitch had thought. In the world he'd been living in, the way he'd been taught to understand power and how it worked—his father had been powerful, but Mitch had proven how little that power was worth under the right circumstances.

No wonder he wanted Mitch under his thumb: the worst danger in his world, secured so Joey knew where he was and what he was doing every minute of every day. No wonder he wanted to clean himself up: so nobody could ever nail him the way the FBI had nailed his father.

"Yeah, well," Joey was saying, breaking the stretching silence like he hadn't noticed it was there. "Were you somehow under the impression it was my life's goal to die in prison because of you? Jesus, McDeere. Of course I don't want to end up like that. Give me a break."

He was trying to keep his tone light, breezy. But there was strain underneath, and Mitch understood it.

Of course he wasn't going to admit that he was afraid. But that didn't mean he wasn't.

It was stupid, probably. It was going to get Mitch killed. But suddenly he looked at Joey and he saw any ten of his clients—people who'd broken the law but hadn't wanted to, knew they shouldn't have, knew they were right on the edge of having it ruin everything; people who wanted to change, wanted to get out, but weren't going to have the chance without his help.

Shit.

"It's going to be okay," Mitch said, because he wanted to. Because he was pretty sure nobody had said that to Joey in a long time, and it seemed painfully obvious that Joey needed to hear it.

Joey still had his hands fisted in Mitch's suit jacket; he tightened them, a quick ripple of tension through his fingers, like he was thinking of yanking Mitch closer still, or maybe switching gears and shoving him backwards into the desk again. He said, "Fuck you," but it came out thin and hoarse, not the way he sounded when he meant it.

"It is," Mitch said. "Patrick didn't kill Charlotte Miller. We know who did. I'm not going to let him get charged with a crime he didn't commit. And I'm not going to let the guy who did commit it walk away, either."

Joey stared at him for a second. And then, as if involuntarily, the corner of his mouth shifted, like it wanted to stretch out into a real smile. "Even if the FBI wants you to."

"You might have noticed this, Joey," Mitch said mildly, "but I'm not all that good at doing what other people want me to do."

Joey's hands loosened; now he was just resting them there, half-open fists against Mitch's chest. He was still standing as close as ever, though, and Mitch was—Mitch still had his own hands closed around Joey's wrists, which abruptly seemed like too much, like it carried a weight of meaning that it shouldn't.

"Besides," Mitch added, "if I get Patrick out of this, then you'll go straight like you've been planning to. Which means you won't be able to have me whacked anymore."

Joey huffed a wry breath through his nose. "Don't count on it," he said.

And then he let go. It took a second for Mitch to catch up, to open his own hands, and for the span of that second it was—Joey was just there, in front of him, with his wrists in Mitch's grip, not trying to get away or shake him off; held.

Mitch jerked away and gripped the edge of the desk instead, and tried to ignore the false sensation of tingling heat in his palms.

Joey stayed where he was for a beat, and Mitch's heart compressed itself strangely in his chest—but when Joey reached out again, it was just to smooth Mitch's crumpled lapels back down, ostentatious in his precision. Mitch didn't even know what it was he'd expected instead.

Then Joey stepped away, smirked at him and said something casually snide about his hours of operation. Mitch turned away pointedly and didn't respond, and after a moment he heard Joey's footsteps again, leaving the room; moving away down the hallway.

He didn't move, even after the sound was gone and there was nothing left to listen to. He'd known this was a bad idea, he thought distantly. Putting himself right in the middle of Joey's space, somewhere where he'd see Joey six times a day even if he wasn't trying, where he could—where it would start to matter to him what Joey was thinking, how he was feeling. Where he couldn't think to himself for a half-second that Joey seemed tired, and then let the thought go and not see Joey for three days and forget he'd ever thought it. Where he was going to want to _do_ something about it if he could, and never mind all the reasons that was unbelievably stupid.

He couldn't afford to have a stake in whether Joey was going to be okay. He couldn't afford to wonder whether he was going to make it out from under the shadow his father had cast on him. He couldn't afford to care about any of this—

He'd known this was a bad idea. But he couldn't back out now, and he stood there and sucked in a breath, staring at the gorgeous gleaming wood paneling, and understood that he was absolutely fucked.

* * *

He dealt with it as best he could. He avoided Joey as much as humanly possible, which wasn't very much. It was weirdly easy to get used to—all of it, from the building itself to passing Joey's guys in the hall all the time, their grudgingly deferential nods; the way everything had rearranged itself around the new space, and their in-house lunch service thanks to the kitchens downstairs. It got to the point where Mitch had fallen asleep on the sofa next to his desk twice in the first week, just because—

Just because even Joey's turf was preferable to rattling around in the relentless emptiness of his house.

And, of course, there was Joey. Joey, who didn't have to call, didn't have to pile himself into one of his shiny black cars and go on a field trip, every time he wanted to needle Mitch, because now he was a floor up basically all day long.

Mitch could admit he'd already spent what was probably too much time thinking about Joey. Just because Joey took up so much of his life, that was all—Patrick's case, for one, and the things Joey kept doing because of it, shooting people and buying off witnesses and getting shot at himself.

Having that bad habit reinforced by actually seeing Joey in person all the time didn't exactly help.

It had gotten so bad he was starting to dream about Joey. About Joey's fists crumpling his suit jackets, his shirtfronts; about Joey shoving him, his desk against the backs of his thighs, the way Joey's voice sounded when he swore and the way his eyes looked when he was angry. It was—it was working up to something, Mitch could feel the knot of it in his gut, and he tried hard not to think about what that something was going to be.

And then the Russians came along, and made it unimaginably worse.

They were in one of Joey's cars when it happened.

Mitch's plan to stay as far away from Joey as possible was, inevitably, going to be intermittently foiled by their visits to Patrick. Joey never wanted to go more than a week or two before seeing Patrick, checking on him, making sure nobody was hassling him in lockup. And Mitch weighed his own discomfort with being trapped in an enclosed space with Joey against the odds that Joey, left to his own devices, would come away from talking to Patrick having decided to shoot another of his own guys, or bribe the judge, or something else Mitch was going to be left trying to sort out—

Well. A round-trip car ride wasn't going to kill him.

Or at least that was what he thought, before the intersection at 31st and Columbia.

The light was against them; the car slowed to a stop. Mitch was staring out the window, even though it was tinted and rolled up all the way, in an effort to keep himself from looking at Joey too much. He saw cars pulling up to either side of them, but he didn't think twice about it. There were lanes there, and it was midday. He'd have been more surprised if they'd been alone waiting for the light.

He saw one car's rear door open. He wondered idly what kind of hurry whoever was in there had to be in, that they wanted to get out before the driver had even had a chance to try to park.

He glanced at Joey, drawn by helpless reflex to see whether the only other person nearby had noticed what he'd noticed. And Joey was looking out the window, too, but he was frowning. Not a lot; just the barest narrowing of his eyes, the barest divot of a crease forming over his eyebrows, before he reached up to tug down the privacy divider. "Hey, Benny," he said.

He didn't get the chance to finish the question.

Someone moved around the car that had its door open, ducked down lower than Mitch could see out the window. The car on the other side of them suddenly screeched into motion, with a simultaneous roar of the engine and squeal of the brakes; the light hadn't changed, but it wasn't going far, swinging in a tight arc so it came around and stopped side-on to the front of Joey's car.

Joey had been turning a little in his seat to talk to the driver, looking away. He looked back, straight at Mitch, and said, "Mitch—"

And then about five things happened at once.

One of them was that Mitch's ears filled up with noise, so loud it was like a blow; another was that suddenly Mitch was on his side, hammered into the door of the car, which didn't make any sense with his seatbelt still on. His head hit something—the frame of the door? The window?—and the deafening ringing in his ears almost matched up to the pulsating throb of his head.

He hadn't been thrown from the car. He knew he hadn't been thrown from the car. He struggled to push himself up; he couldn't think, couldn't figure out how to unlatch his seatbelt. The loudest sound in the world was the screaming of his eardrums, and the second loudest was his heart.

No, of course. Of course he hadn't been thrown anywhere. Of course he was sideways. Dimly, he began to understand what had happened. The car had flipped on its side. Whoever had gotten out of the car next to them—what had they done? Stuck some kind of explosive to the underside of the chassis? And that sound, that thudding crunching sound over the endless ringing in his ears, that was someone breaking one of the windows—

Mitch's clumsy buzzing fingers found his seatbelt. He fumbled at it; it was like he'd never pressed a button in his life. He didn't even know what he was going to do if he got out of it. God, his head hurt, and the pain spiked so hard it was nauseating when he tried to turn it or look around, but he had to, because—there, that was Joey, crumpled up across from him. Except Joey _hadn't_ been wearing his seatbelt, so he'd fallen down onto the door that was now pressed to the pavement, and he was only just stirring.

Mitch couldn't get to him. Mitch couldn't figure out how to get to him, and then it was too late: the window above him gave way, and suddenly the door was open, a man up there who'd climbed on top of the car peering down at Mitch.

He smiled.

He climbed in, reached for Mitch, pinned him—Mitch struggled, but it didn't help, because he was halfway gone already, black creeping in spottily at the edges of his vision, even before he felt a sting in his neck and everything went away.

When he came around, he was cuffed to a chair.

The chair was cold. So were the cuffs. He felt clammy, goosebumped with chill, everywhere except—except his cheek, for some reason. The skin there was hot and stinging.

He had time to put that thought together, sitting there limp and unmoving, eyes closed, the vaguest shadow of a headache lurking over one ear. And then someone slapped him, hard: again, he understood. They'd been slapping him already, he just hadn't known it until now, and they were going to keep doing it until they could tell he was awake.

He wanted to move, so they'd stop. He wanted to open his eyes. But he couldn't make it happen, and they hit him again, again, and then finally a weak sound crawled out of his throat, and someone made an eager noise and said, "There, see. I told you it would work."

Whoever it was, Mitch thought, they were right. That sting in his neck, right before he'd passed out—they'd shot him up with something, sedated him. Now that he grasped that, he could almost feel the dose wearing off; thirty seconds ago his body hadn't been listening to him at all, but now he tried to blink one more time, to pry his eyes open, and he could.

Everything seemed too bright, at first. He shifted his weight, a sluggish half-formed flinch, and squinted, blinking a few more times. A room swam into place around him: dull, dim, concrete walls. But he was sitting in a pool of light, stark and white, pouring down harshly. There were people—three or four men lined up against the wall, waiting quietly, hands clasped. Big guys; muscle. One a little closer, standing there peering at Mitch, and by the look of pleased relief on his face, that was the guy who'd spoken a moment ago. The guy whose idea it had been, maybe, to use the sedative, grateful that his suggestion hadn't caused a problem here after all. He had one hand half-raised, palm pinked up. Ready to slap Mitch again.

And seated in front of Mitch, watching him with an intent, assessing look, was Luka Karpov.

Mitch had never seen him in person before, but it didn't matter. He'd looked at more than enough photos, in Louis's files.

"Mr. McDeere," Karpov said. "Mr. McDeere—can you hear me?"

Mitch decided not to answer for a second, stalling to give himself a chance to peer around the room again, as if he were trying to figure out where he was.

He knew better than to think that he could, or that knowing which building he was underneath would do him any good. But he remembered the car, he remembered the explosion, and no way had Karpov taken him but left Joey lying in the street.

Joey wasn't in here, though. And that made a cold knot settle into the pit of Mitch's stomach.

Objectively, his own odds of survival had to be better if Joey was alive—if Joey was important enough to Karpov that Karpov hadn't killed him already. But he didn't have it together enough in his head for that to matter the way it should. It was so much simpler than that. So much more straightforward, and so much more dangerous. He didn't want to be alone here; he didn't want to be alone here, and he didn't want to think about it, Joey's dead body lying out in the hallway or something, Joey's eyes wide and pale and staring at nothing.

Joey didn't want to end up like his dad. Joey wanted to make something new, something better, out of himself. And the idea that that could have ended in Karpov shooting him in the head and tossing his body in the river felt suddenly unbearable.

"Mr. McDeere," Karpov repeated, more sternly.

Mitch swallowed, mouth dry, and made himself meet Karpov's eyes. "Karpov," he said, because it didn't seem like there was much point in pretending he didn't know who he was talking to.

Karpov studied him for a moment longer.

And then he smiled. Slow, at first, barely there, and then wider and wider, and Mitch's heart twisted in his chest like it knew as well as he did that that didn't mean anything good, like it wanted out of this room and it would leave the rest of him behind if it could.

"I assume you must wonder what I have done with Mr. Morolto," Karpov murmured. "It pleases me to give you this good news: Mr. Morolto is still alive."

And that was good, Mitch thought, except in all the ways it was also counterintuitively bad. Because if Karpov hadn't killed Joey—what the hell _was_ he going to do with him?

"I prefer to keep it that way. You do as well, no doubt."

"Why?" Mitch said.

Karpov grinned, all benificent amusement. "I surprise you! You know Mr. Morolto causes me trouble. You think—why should I not be rid of him?" He adopted a thoughtful expression, and leaned forward in his chair, lowering his voice as if confiding. "Make no mistake, Mr. McDeere. If it should become necessary, I will not hesitate. But this thought does not please me. Mr. Morolto is powerful man, running powerful family." He spread his hands. "Better that we should find ourselves able to come to some kind of agreement, yes? We are not men who surrender easily. War between us would end in river of blood."

"And you want to avoid that," Mitch said, not bothering to hide his skepticism. Karpov didn't exactly strike him as somebody who cared a lot about collateral damage.

Karpov shrugged. "It would send message," he acknowledged after a moment. "You understand that I am capable of having Mr. Morolto's head returned to his men packed up in nice box. But violence, uncertainty—in this country, these things are not so good for business as you might think."

"Right," Mitch said. "So let us go, then."

Karpov laughed, slapped his knees and shook his head. "You are funny, Mr. McDeere. Very funny. No, this is problem I spend great deal of time turning over, wondering what to do. If I leave Mr. Morolto alive, untouched—encouraging you, Mr. McDeere, to defy me—that sends message, too. But Mr. Morolto is not like you, Mr. McDeere. To hold him at edge of quarry means nothing. Threat of death is there for him every day, and he knows it." He leaned in again. "So, it comes to me: I must think of something else. I must think of something that will matter to Mr. Morolto, something that will reach deeper than any bullet."

Mitch drew a slow breath, let it out, and didn't let the look on his face change—but jesus, what the fuck was that supposed to mean? What the hell was Karpov planning?

"Mr. Morolto cannot be permitted to go on doing as he pleases," Karpov said gravely. "There must be consequences. For you, also, there must be consequences, Mr. McDeere. There is no way out. But I will give you this choice. You may teach Mr. Morolto this lesson yourself. Or you may refuse—" He turned, and glanced illustratively at the men lined up against the wall; Mitch could keep track well enough to count them accurately now, and there were four.

Four. He'd understood even when he was still dazed that they were muscle, and it was true. They were big, tall, hulking shoulders and meaty fists, and whatever it was Karpov had in mind—it had to be better for Mitch to do it than four angry Russians who were more invested in impressing their boss than keeping Joey in one piece.

He looked at them and then at Karpov; Karpov had turned back to him and was watching him look, and when Mitch met his eyes again, he smiled. "They would be glad to, Mr. McDeere. They would enjoy it, I think."

"Sorry to deprive them of their fun," Mitch bit out. He was, distantly, almost glad to be cuffed into the chair with his hands behind him. It meant Karpov couldn't see the way his fists had clenched up. "What exactly is it that I have to do? Beat him up for you?"

"No, no," Karpov assured him, businesslike. "Certainly not. That, too, is kind of violence Mr. Morolto no doubt expects to be required to endure. It would be ineffective. No, you will do something else. Something Mr. Morolto will not forget so quickly." He paused, and then smiled again: a small, confiding smile that filled Mitch with slow dark foreboding. "As I said, Mr. McDeere—we are not men who surrender easily. Or willingly."

And then he reached out, gripped Mitch by the nape of the neck with one heavy hand; leaned in close enough to murmur right into Mitch's ear, and explained.

* * *

Joey was chained to the floor.

He wasn't particularly happy about it. He had enough leeway, cuffs through a D-ring that was bolted into the concrete, that he could probably sit up if he tried; and he wanted to try, because the floor was fucking cold. But he wasn't a hundred percent confident he'd stay sitting up for very long, if he tried it right now. His head was spinning in slow circles, and he felt weak, shaky, in a way that made him almost grateful for the solid stability of the floor beneath him.

He'd just stay like this for a little bit, he decided.

Aside from the floor, he wasn't uncomfortable. He'd come to on his back, hands in the cuffs up over his head, and while he was past the point where it had felt like turning on his side might make him vomit, he'd decided he wasn't in any particular hurry. He'd spotted at least one camera in a corner, and he didn't want to give Karpov the satisfaction of seeing him weak.

He lay there, and he breathed.

There was a door. No way to get to it, it was probably locked anyway, and with his luck there were twenty of Karpov's goons in the hallway outside.

A door, and walls that were concrete, too. No windows, nothing. Bare minimum, there wasn't a drain set into the floor, so if Karpov was planning to kill him, it probably wasn't going to happen in here.

Small blessings.

He laughed, choked and quiet, in the back of his throat. His head was clearing more and more as the minutes passed. He felt almost normal, now, except he ached a little where he'd been thrown around in the car as it flipped on its side.

Nobody had come in to talk to him yet, but it had to be Karpov. Surely it had to be Karpov. Unless somebody new in town had decided to make a real bold opening move—and that was all Joey needed, a new front opening up on his flank. Christ.

He heard a faint, distant scrape, and turned his head toward the door. Footsteps, maybe.

Sure enough, after another handful of seconds, there was a noise at the door itself. And then it opened, and McDeere was standing in it.

Specifically, McDeere was standing in it with one arm twisted up hard behind him and a gun to his head, and the look on his face was—Joey had never seen him look like that, pale, eyes huge and hollow in his face, mouth pressed in on itself like he was straining not to be sick all over the floor.

"Mitch," Joey said.

"You change mind, Mr. McDeere?" said the Russian behind McDeere, solicitous—not Karpov himself, Karpov's English was better than that, but if he wasn't one of Karpov's, Joey would eat his shoes.

McDeere seemed to gather himself at that, swallowing hard, throat working, eyes jerking away from Joey. "No," he said, quick, sharp. "No, I haven't changed my mind."

The Russian grunted, dismissive, and shoved him inside; the door closed again behind him with a scrape, a heavy solid sound like it was a boulder rolling into place, and then it was just Joey and McDeere.

Joey raised his eyebrows at McDeere—who had both hands free, and could at least have done him the courtesy of making some kind of attempt to get him out of these cuffs. But McDeere was just standing there, a stride from the door.

His hands were shaking.

"Mitch," Joey said again, slowly.

McDeere met his eyes again, and the tension in his face made it look like he was in agony, enough that Joey had to look him over, trying to guess where they'd broken bones.

But he wasn't bleeding anywhere. He began to take unsteady steps toward Joey, and he wasn't limping, wasn't favoring one leg or the other. He was moving like it hurt him to do it, but not literally.

Which was weird as hell.

"McDeere," Joey said, just as McDeere came to a stop beside him, dropped into a crouch and then to his knees. Jesus, McDeere's zombie routine was freaking him out. Joey tilted his chin up, rattled his cuffs, and sneered at it, because that was what he always did with shit he was afraid of. "Guess you're not here to let me out of these, huh? Figures."

McDeere's mouth twisted, like he was thinking about laughing, or maybe crying. "No," he agreed. "I'm not." He swallowed, once, twice. He hadn't touched Joey; his hands were raised like he'd been about to, but he'd clenched them into fists instead and left them hovering there. "Listen, Joey—"

"What? They sent you in here just to deliver Karpov's terms or something?"

"Karpov wants you punished," McDeere said, wavering, toneless.

And boy, was that a terrifying thing to hear in McDeere's voice, delivered rote like it was the only thing in McDeere's head. Jesus, what the fuck had Karpov told him to do? Joey ignored the cold foreboding trickling up and down his spine, the way his muscles wanted to tense, and laughed a little through his nose. "No shit," he said, affecting deep surprise.

He'd thought he might be able to get at least a twitch of amusement out of McDeere at that, at the acknowledgment that Karpov sure had plenty to be pissed at him for; but McDeere just knelt there, pale, looking like he wanted to die.

"Karpov wants you punished," he said again, "in—in a way you won't forget."

Christ. Fucking Russians and their melodrama.

"Mitch, come on. Just do it, whatever it is."

And at that, McDeere looked at him again. Met his eyes, and then leaned in a little and said, fast and frantic, "I'm sorry, Joey. I'm sorry, but he said—he let me pick. He said if I didn't do it—"

"—he'd let all his goons do it for you," Joey guessed, and McDeere flinched like Joey had struck him. "Listen, McDeere, I get the picture. They had to shove you in here with a gun to your head. I'm not stupid."

"Joey," McDeere said, low, hardly over a whisper.

And then there was a bang—a heavy blow landing against the outside of the door. Some kind of a signal, it must have been, because McDeere jerked and reached for Joey.

Joey was expecting to be hit. It made some kind of sense. Not a lot, considering how artistic Karpov had gotten about it; maybe it was supposed to be embarrassing, considering McDeere worked for him and all. Maybe McDeere had special instructions, was supposed to break Joey's fingers or cut off the soles of his feet. Maybe Karpov was hoping it wouldn't just hurt Joey, but make it harder, or even impossible, for him to keep working with McDeere—two birds with one stone, fuck Joey up and take away the best chance he had of saving Patrick at the same time.

Might even have worked, if Joey hadn't thought it through. Because this was going to suck, and there was definitely an extra layer of meaning in the fact that it was going to be McDeere doing it. Joey could picture a world in which he couldn't stand the sight of McDeere after this, in which the idea that McDeere had seen him bleeding, taken apart, sobbing, was unbearable.

But he had to keep his eyes on the prize. Patrick. He could take whatever McDeere was about to dish out, and he could keep his head on straight about it, if it meant McDeere won Patrick's case. That was all there was to it.

He was telling himself that, and feeling okay about it, as McDeere's hands reached toward him. And then McDeere gripped—gripped Joey's slacks, gripped Joey's _fly_ , with trembling fingers, and suddenly everything flew out of Joey's head.

"Joey," McDeere was saying, hoarse and wretched. "Joey, I have to—Karpov said he'll let us go if I—"

"No," Joey said.

"Joey—"

"No, _no_. Get the fuck off me! Don't _touch_ me," and Joey scrabbled at the concrete with his feet, twisted his body away from McDeere as best he could, because Jesus fucking Christ. He felt cold all over, he couldn't think, his breath was coming in frantic whining gasps in the back of his throat; fuck, fuck, _fuck_.

He got it now, all right. He understood what Karpov was thinking. Karpov didn't just want to fuck him up; Karpov wanted to humiliate him. Humiliate him, and make it utterly impossible for him to look McDeere in the face ever again, because fuck, how the fuck could he after McDeere had—had _fucked_ him?

It would have been a master stroke, all right, except Karpov had absolutely no actual understanding of what it was going to mean.

Joey knew the rules. Probably the same rules Karpov knew. There were things men did, real men, and there were things they didn't do—couldn't let themselves do, couldn't be caught doing. You could almost get away with it, maybe, if you weren't the one playing the bitch. And if that had been all, well, that would be bad enough: McDeere holding him down, making him take it, like he'd dropped his soap in a prison shower.

But the thing Karpov didn't know, _couldn't_ know, because Joey barely let himself know it most of the time, was how much worse than that it was. How much worse this was going to get, if his stupid fucking body betrayed him with McDeere's hands on him.

He'd been careful. He'd tried to be careful. He didn't think about it; he didn't touch McDeere too much, he always made sure there were other people around. He always made sure that he was being an asshole, that McDeere didn't want—didn't want anything Joey had to offer. He always let McDeere get away again.

Sometimes being careful wasn't enough. That day he'd been shot at, Jesus, he still dreamed about it: McDeere's weight against him, McDeere's body on him, pressing him down into the pavement, covering him.

He'd tried not to get shot at again since then—not out of one kind of self-preservation, but out of another. If he let himself start courting bullets in the deranged hope that McDeere might do it again, he'd be off the deep end for sure.

But this—Jesus, fuck, he couldn't, _could not_ , let this happen—

McDeere had curled his fingers tight in Joey's waistband, held on through Joey's frantic writhing and didn't let go. "If I don't, they're going to," he was pleading, low, strained. "You were right, Joey. If I don't, they're going to. There's four of them out there. Joey—"

Christ. Joey almost wanted to laugh, knowing it would come out strung-out and hysterical if he did. That would almost be better. The Russians would make it hurt. They'd make it into something Joey would be able to hate. Maybe they would even fix it, fix him; maybe once they were done with him, he wouldn't want it anymore. But McDeere—McDeere couldn't be trusted with this, and god, it was ten million times worse than getting fucked on Karpov's cameras, to get fucked on Karpov's cameras and _like_ it. It was going to fucking kill him.

"No," he gasped out, trying to squirm away again. "No," and his throat hurt, his eyes were hot. He tried to kick at McDeere, tried to curl around and knee him in the thigh, but McDeere wouldn't let go of him.

Because McDeere was fucking stubborn. McDeere was fucking stubborn, and he thought he was _saving_ Joey, and when McDeere thought he could save somebody he did shit like cross the most powerful Russian mob in the US and get himself on the FBI's shitlist. He did shit like fuck Joey Morolto in the ass on a concrete floor, and it was basically impossible to stop him.

"Come on," McDeere whispered. "Come on, please. Just let me. You can just let me—"

"No, I _can't_ ," Joey spat, squeezing his eyes shut. "I can't _just let you_ , Jesus fucking Christ, McDeere."

The silence stretched. McDeere was still gripping Joey by the slacks, holding him there.

"Then I'm sorry," McDeere said at last, very quietly.

And there was Joey's last hope, gone. Every now and then, you could catch McDeere where he was soft, where he would actually crumple. But you had to get lucky, because he was just as likely to show all the steel he had in him. And he had a hell of a lot of steel in him, when he wanted to.

God. Wasn't that an unfortunate bit of double entendre to have in his brain right now.

McDeere moved. Pinned Joey, swung a knee over him to hold him down by the thighs, and Joey shouted at him, brought his elbows down as far as he could with the cuffs still secured over his head and tried to tip McDeere off him.

It didn't work. McDeere caught the sides of his fly, undid the top button and then fumbled the next, and Joey spared half a thought to be grateful it was buttons all the way down instead of a zipper, in these slacks, because at least that was going to slow McDeere down a little bit.

McDeere wasn't hard. Joey could tell, and he burned with furious helpless resentment at the roil of mixed feelings that that fact sent curling its weight into his gut, because—it was a good thing, it had to be; maybe if McDeere couldn't get it up, the Russians would be sent in after all. He couldn't afford to pay attention to the stupid mindless part of him that wanted to die over it: that here he was, laid out for McDeere, and McDeere didn't even fucking want him.

Fuck, he was so fucked.

He struggled again, desperate, unable to stop himself, because he couldn't fucking stand this; and McDeere shifted on top of him, cursed and leaned down to pin him across the chest with one forearm, still struggling with Joey's fly with the other hand. It brought their faces closer, too close, and Joey bared his teeth and spat insults at McDeere through his teeth, because he couldn't bear to do anything else.

But McDeere leaning down had brought everything else closer, McDeere's thighs parted around Joey's, McDeere tense and hot and heavy over him. Joey could feel his face, flushing with heat and with furious mortification, because if he didn't get McDeere the fuck off him in about two seconds—

McDeere flicked another button free, shoved his hand further into Joey's pants, and then froze.

Just for a split second, that was all. But it was enough. His eyes flickered up to meet Joey's, suddenly searching, intent; and Joey swore at him, voice cracking, and tried to elbow him in the face.

"Jesus, Joey," McDeere bit out, dodging the elbow. And then he put more weight into his arm on Joey's chest, moved one thigh and pushed it between Joey's instead of using it to cage Joey's right where they were, and Joey gasped, shoved against it, and felt—

Well, shit. Maybe McDeere was going to be up to the job after all.

It went faster after that. McDeere got the rest of the buttons undone, slid unsteady fingertips down the line of Joey's dick and kept his eyes on Joey's and dug his teeth into his lip, and jesus, he looked obscene like that.

Joey was grimly prepared for McDeere to say something about it—how hard Joey was against his hand, how much his idiot dick was already leaking through his briefs, because Joey could feel it, the cool wetness of it, everywhere McDeere's hand wasn't.

But instead, McDeere slid half a glance in the direction of the camera in the corner. And then he moved his hand, gripped Joey roughly by the hip. Joey strained against it automatically, but McDeere had the advantage and then some, both his hands and the superior position, the leverage to force Joey to roll over beneath him and then to keep him there with one heavy palm between his shoulder blades.

And he turned Joey over by grappling him away from the camera, not toward it, and with his body caging Joey in the whole time. Hiding him. Hiding him, so Karpov wouldn't see.

For some reason, that was a blow Joey hadn't been expecting. That was the thing that finally made his eyes wet, and he was dimly grateful McDeere had done it in time to hide his face from McDeere, too.

McDeere worked his slacks the rest of the way down his hips, down his thighs; the sensation of the back of McDeere's hand, the individual presses of his knuckles as he went, against Joey's ass was unbearable. Joey thrashed, bit his tongue so he wouldn't make a noise and then made one anyway, deep in the back of his throat, and McDeere sucked in a breath and shuddered over him, which didn't help.

And then McDeere dragged Joey's briefs down, too, and that was the beginning of the end.

Joey screamed at him, breath ragged, kicking, squirming; it didn't matter. McDeere held him down and didn't falter—shoved one hand between Joey's hips and the floor so every motion Joey made just pushed his cock up the plane of McDeere's palm over and over, until Joey was practically sobbing with it. And then he took that hand and brought it up, so Joey could smell himself. So Joey could taste himself, too, once McDeere had worked two fingers into Joey's mouth.

Because of course the Russians hadn't given McDeere any lube for this. That was basically the opposite of the point.

Joey wished he could believe that that meant he wouldn't enjoy it. As it was, he got to entertain the thought that maybe he'd get lucky, maybe it would hurt and he'd hate it and he'd never want McDeere to touch him again, for about two seconds before McDeere dragged his fingers back out of Joey's mouth, slid them along Joey's cheek and jaw, and then drew a sharp breath against the back of Joey's ear, and took them away—brought them down and pushed them along the crack of Joey's ass.

It did hurt, when he finally actually shoved them in. It just didn't hurt enough. He started with one, and that alone felt like too much to bear, a thick low burn building up as Joey clenched helplessly around it. But it didn't hurt enough for Joey to hate it. He lay there with his throat closed up tight, his eyes burning, his hands clenched into fists; he couldn't let this happen, except he had to, except there was no way to stop it.

McDeere shoved another finger in. Joey made a harsh wounded sound. Another finger, and by then Joey wanted to shout at him, to tell him to quit fucking around and just do it, except he couldn't, because there were no words left in his head. He moved, and he wanted it to be away from McDeere, away from those fingers in him, but he wasn't sure that it was.

He wondered dimly whether Karpov was pissed that McDeere was taking his time. Being careful, at least as careful as he could be under the circumstances. Maybe Karpov thought it was better that way. Dragging it out, forcing Joey to put up with being coaxed through it like a nervous virgin. Made it worse.

It _was_ making it worse. Just not the way Karpov might have thought it was.

It was humiliating after all, McDeere grabbing him by the hips and forcing him to lift himself up, ass in the air. But it was like the fingers, the pain: it wasn't humiliating enough that Joey could tell himself he wasn't getting off on it. He was the hardest he could ever remember being, dick curving hot and wet against his belly, and his face was wet too because he'd cried, was crying, but at least he was doing it silently. This was fucking killing him, and he couldn't get enough of it.

McDeere had undone his own pants. He hadn't bothered pulling his belt free; Joey could feel the metal, cool against his hot skin, where each end of the buckle was pressing into his ass. And that was undoubtedly McDeere's cock, that hard scorching weight, except it was pushed up against the backs of Joey's thighs. McDeere wasn't doing anything with it.

"Joey—"

"Fuck you," Joey gasped. "You son of a bitch, McDeere." His throat hurt, his eyes stung; he could feel himself shaking, and he couldn't stop it. "I'm going to fucking kill you for this."

"I know," McDeere said hoarsely. "I know you are."

And then he did it.

Just the tip, at first. He had a hand down there, guiding himself, and he pushed Joey open a little bit with his thumb and then started working the head in. It felt huge, it was too much; how did anybody stand this? How did anybody survive this? Joey tried to jerk away, tried to flatten himself against the floor, but McDeere didn't let him, held him there until he took it, and then a little more, a little more. It burned, it ached—it felt like it was going right through him, like McDeere was pushing right into the center of him, stripping him open and touching everywhere Joey had never meant to let anybody touch.

Joey became aware that he was digging his fingers into his palms, that he was choking out short broken noises as McDeere fucked him. McDeere paused for a second and Joey wanted to murder him, but it was just to readjust his grip now that he was fucking Joey for real, spreading one broad hand over Joey's hip and reaching up with the other to—to clasp the nape of Joey's neck, keep Joey's shoulders shoved against the floor. Joey's cheeks were burning, he wanted to die; he was two seconds from coming, but his hands were still cuffed and McDeere wasn't touching his dick.

He let a particularly sharp, harsh sound escape him, as McDeere thrust in harder, and McDeere shifted—moved his hand from the back of Joey's neck to his face, fingers over his mouth. Trying to help him keep himself quiet, jesus.

Joey squeezed his eyes shut, felt his lips part under McDeere's fingertips like somebody else was doing it. McDeere jerked, tensed—had pulled out a little, and fucked back in faster, more sharply, than he had been before. The heat of it blazed through Joey in one long burst up his spine and back down, and now he was panting around McDeere's fingers just because he had to, just because he was suddenly running out of air.

McDeere's fingers curled. Joey gasped around them, closed his mouth on them, and McDeere made a soft breathless sound and—and shoved them in, pushed them over Joey's tongue, made Joey take them the same way he was making Joey take his dick, and that was it.

Joey shook, hips rolling mindlessly, every muscle in his body straining, and came against himself. He tried blindly to thrust down, to rub the aftershocks out against the floor, but he couldn't; McDeere was gripping his hip so hard he was going to bruise in the shape of McDeere's fingers, fucking into him so his back bowed, and then McDeere came too, shaking, and it was over.

* * *

Mitch knew he had to let go of Joey. He had to let go of Joey, he had to—jesus—pull out of him, help him clean himself up. He had to apologize, even if Joey wasn't going to listen to him.

It was just that it was hard to do, with his arms still shaking, every part of his body trembling.

God. That wasn't—it hadn't been supposed to be like that. He hadn't meant for it to be like that. He hadn't even been sure he was going to be able to do it at all; he'd assumed that if he couldn't get hard, Karpov was going to lose patience. Pound on the door twice, two strikes, and then three, and then replace him with four men who wanted to make their boss happy and didn't give half a shit about Joey Morolto. But that wasn't a thought that had helped get him in the mood any better, to put it lightly.

But Joey—

Jesus.

Mitch caught his breath, steadied himself, and tried to at least pull away carefully. Joey held still under him and didn't make a sound, and Mitch's stomach rolled.

But he'd had to. He'd had to. He couldn't have lived with himself if he hadn't—if he'd had to sit there and watch. However sick he felt now, that would've been a hundred times worse.

He yanked his slacks up, autopilot, and did up his fly, his belt, with unsteady hands. He should've—he should've made sure Joey was okay first, he thought, too late, but wasn't it better for Joey not to have to look at him with his pants still open? He didn't know. He didn't know.

He swallowed hard, bile high in the back of his throat, and reached for Joey.

Joey had slid to the floor when Mitch let go of him, curling in on himself a little. But his hands were still cuffed; he couldn't pull his own pants up. He was going to have to let Mitch do it for him. And surely it was better not to—not to force him to ask.

Mitch touched him. Joey tensed, but didn't move. Mitch caught the waist of his slacks, his briefs, and tugged them up his thighs, covering his ass again; he tried not to look at it, not to want to, but at the same time he forced himself not to hurry, because the thought of treating Joey roughly now that it was over was unconscionable.

He swallowed. He didn't want to refasten Joey's fly. But Joey couldn't, and Mitch wasn't going to leave him with his dick hanging out, for fuck's sake.

"Joey," he said, hoarse, half an apology. And Joey didn't answer, but he didn't try to thrash his way out from under Mitch's hands, either.

Mitch was expecting the door to open now. Karpov had been watching, hadn't he? Wasn't that the point of the camera? He had to know it was over. He had to have sent somebody for them. Mitch glanced at the camera, wondering distantly whether it would help to wave into it, to shout at it—

There was no light.

He blinked up at it, its dark gleaming lens. This was a room where Karpov put people when he wanted them to know he was watching them. The camera wasn't hidden, wasn't subtle. And it had had a little red light, showing that it was on and recording, when Mitch had been shoved in here.

Hadn't it? Maybe it hadn't. Maybe Mitch's brain had just filled that detail in for him, thinking it knew what cameras looked like. Maybe—he swallowed a hysterical laugh—the goddamn thing had broken two minutes in, and Karpov hadn't even been looking at it.

He stayed where he was for a second, kneeling beside Joey. And then he forced himself to his feet, crossed the floor with slow deliberate steps that were only a little unsteady, and tried the door.

Locked, not that he'd expected it to be open. He raised a fist to it, banged on it. Surely Karpov had left somebody outside in the hallway.

Nothing. Jesus, had—had Karpov just brought them into the basement of some parking garage or something? Had he locked them in here and left them? Mitch didn't know what to think. He banged on the door again, harder, throat tight—

A shout. Hadn't that been a shout?

He waited for a second, holding his breath, ears straining, and then banged again, over and over, hammering.

And when he stopped, there was a sound, a scrabbling, a click; and the door swung open.

"Jesus, Mitch," Ray said, breathless. "Are you okay?"

Ray didn't have the key to Joey's handcuffs, but he did know how to pick them. Joey had rolled over the second the door opened—shifted around, sat up, while Ray got him loose, and then stood up, and only wavered a little.

Sal was there, too, and he rushed in and inserted himself at Joey's shoulder, steadying Joey in place without making it look as though he was.

They left. There were a handful of Joey's guys stationed along the length of the hallway, two or three dead Russians on the ground. One set of stairs, a door with a ludicrously ordinary EXIT sign over it, and they came out into an alley, where half a dozen of Joey's cars were waiting for them.

Ray explained most of it on the drive. That Benny the driver, bless his heart, had made it out of the car alive, and he hadn't been the Russians' target; he'd gotten away from the scene with nothing worse than a bullet crease to the arm when one of them had spotted him running for it. Sal knew a lot about Karpov's operation, and Ray knew a lot of guys Sal didn't know. They'd learned which building Karpov was holding them in, knocked out the security system, and busted their way in.

Karpov had probably been whisked away at the first sign of trouble. Ray didn't particularly care, as long as Mitch was okay.

The cameras had been out for at least twenty minutes before Ray had heard Mitch banging on the door and found the right room.

So they probably didn't have to worry about any of Karpov's guys having gotten away with a tape of Joey Morolto getting fucked.

Ray didn't say that part, because he didn't know. But Mitch forgot himself, met Joey's eyes for a single scorching instant, and knew Joey was thinking it, too.

He tore his gaze away from Joey, looked out the window instead and let Ray's voice fade to nothing more than a comforting hum. If there was anything else he needed to hear, Ray could tell him later. Right now, it was taking everything he had just to exist in the same space as Joey. Who was sitting there, attentive, composed, suit jacket on and buttoned up neatly, like nothing had happened at all.

He wasn't alone again with Joey, once they got back to the restaurant.

He was grateful for it, distantly. Sal had gotten them both hustled upstairs with a minimum of fuss, and for an instant, at the top of the stairs, Mitch felt his face go cold, felt the nausea lurch to a heaving pitch in his gut, at the thought that Sal was going to ask—was going to make him explain what had happened.

But Sal said, low and steady, to Joey, "Got the doc ready for you in the other room, boss," and then turned and gave Ray a little nod, and suddenly Joey was going one way, Sal at his shoulder, and Mitch was going another.

He wondered who Joey's doctor was, what Joey might say. But it wasn't like he had the right to mind. If he'd—if he'd hurt Joey, not just in every obvious way but also physically, no matter how careful he'd tried to be while they were—while he was—

"Come on, come on, sit down," Ray was saying in his ear, soothing and steady, and then suddenly he was on the couch in his new office with Ray's hand still on his shoulder, Tammy peering down at him with concern.

"Are you okay? You look like shit," she said, not unkindly, and then reached out to touch his face with cautious fingertips.

Oh. Right. One of Karpov's guys had hit him. It had stopped mattering in comparison to the other blow Karpov had dealt him; Mitch didn't really feel it, even now that Tammy had reminded him it had happened. But Tammy's fingers came away with a couple little spots of blood on them, when she was done inspecting Mitch's cheek.

Guy must've had a ring—backhanded him once or twice, before he'd started coming around.

"I'm fine," Mitch said. "It's fine." He cleared his throat. "They drugged us, and then they had to wait for us to wake up again. Karpov got a little impatient."

"Jesus," Ray muttered under his breath, face grim. He left the room, came back after a moment with a washcloth and a cup of water from the bathroom in the hall; Mitch wanted to let his eyes fall shut, wanted to just let it all go away, but Tammy was still looking at him, eyes huge, mouth pressed into a tight line.

"And that was it?" she said, as Ray came around the couch again and started dabbing water over Mitch's brow, down the line of his cheek.

Mitch swallowed. His gut rolled again; he wondered whether they'd be willing to chalk it up to a concussion if he threw up on the floor.

But he was a lawyer. He was a lawyer, and a good one. He knew how to talk around things, and he knew how to lean on technicalities.

"Karpov didn't have me beaten," he said aloud, because that was true, and Ray would be able to tell. "He talked to me for a few minutes. About what a pain in his ass this whole thing has been, Joey and Patrick's case—"

"And you," Ray said, pointed, like he already suspected Mitch was trying to leave something out.

"And me," Mitch agreed, without defensiveness, because getting pointed in return was only going to make Ray more suspicious, not less. "But he said he didn't want Joey dead. He wanted to be able to take over Joey's operation, or maybe just make Joey bend the knee or something. He still needed to make it clear Joey couldn't keep causing him trouble, though."

Ray was still eyeing Mitch skeptically; but his hand, the washcloth, was gentle, cleaning up Mitch's face. "So he locked you in a room with Morolto?" he said, and then paused, with a very deliberate look of thoughtfulness on his face. "Not that that's not punishment enough to make anybody change their ways," he added mildly, "I just wouldn't have expected Karpov to figure that out."

Mitch gave him a flat look, and relaxed a fraction. That was good. Teasing meant Ray was listening to him—meant Ray believed him. Meant maybe he was going to be able to get out of this without telling Ray what he'd done.

At least not yet. If Joey wanted him to, wanted a confession or the chance to inflict a punishment of his own, then Mitch would make it happen. But until he knew how Joey wanted to handle this, he wasn't going to take the initiative.

He wasn't sure he could have if he'd wanted to, right now. He wasn't sure he could get the words out of his mouth if his life depended on it.

"He wanted me to do it," Mitch said aloud. "I think he thought it would—matter more. To Joey," and jesus, this was too much; he'd meant to tiptoe around the edge of it, keep his cool, but his throat was closing and his voice was thin, and Ray's eyes were narrowing by degrees, Ray's whole body going still. "To have it be me, somebody who's working for him, instead of Karpov's goons. More humiliating that way."

If only that were all it had been. If only Mitch could tell himself Joey's pride was the only thing that had been hurt—

"Mitch," Ray said slowly.

Mitch looked at him, reflexive—split-second, before he caught himself and looked away again, but that didn't make it less of a mistake. He didn't know what was on his face, what was in his eyes, but whatever it was, Ray wasn't going to miss it.

"Well, you couldn't have gotten very far," Tammy said, and Mitch was so grateful he could've kissed her. "He looked all right. The way Sal was acting before we found you, I think he was expecting to get Joey back in a couple separate boxes."

Mitch leapt on the opportunity to change the subject. "And you didn't run into any trouble with Karpov?"

Except of course that wasn't a question for Tammy; she hadn't been with Ray in the car, probably had had the sense not to go at all. And Ray—Ray was still watching Mitch, unblinking. Mitch's breath caught in the back of his throat; all he could think was that if Ray asked, really asked, he didn't know what the hell he was going to do.

And then Ray shrugged, and cleared his throat. "Like I said in the car, Karpov probably bailed the second they realized they had a problem. He left a crew in place, but there weren't that many of them. And Morolto's guys do not skimp on ammo." He leaned in a little. "Honestly, I'm pretty sure they were hoping for more resistance than they got. Whatever issues Morolto might be having keeping them in line internally, they all know what it looks like for the family if Karpov can grab Morolto off the street and nobody does anything about it. They were feeling pretty goddamn gung-ho once they heard what happened."

Mitch swallowed a laugh that would have come out hysterical. At least Joey had gotten something out of it; he could probably turn that swell of sentiment to his advantage, no problem.

"Listen," Ray added, too gentle, "just stay right here, okay? I'll go see if Morolto's doctor'll have a minute for you. Just to make sure nothing's more wrong with you than usual."

He knew that something was, Mitch thought. Something worse than Mitch had said. But he'd decided not to push, at least for now, and that was about as much as Mitch could hope for.

"Sure," Mitch managed, and then he closed his eyes, let the soothing sounds of Tammy fussing wash over him, and tried not to think anymore.

That worked for about four hours.

Mitch got looked over, and was declared essentially fine, as long as he gave the rest of the Russians' sedative a little time to work itself the rest of the way through his system, and he didn't do anything stupid. He agreed, and then everyone mercifully left him alone.

He lay on the couch, and didn't move. It got later, and the office got darker. He could hear voices every now and then—Ray and Tammy, presumably. Maybe one of them talking to Sal.

After a while, Ray brought him some dinner from the restaurant. He seemed to have guessed Mitch didn't want much; it was just soup and bread. Mitch managed to act like a person long enough to thank him for it, and then as soon as he was gone, so was Mitch.

He wanted a shower more badly than he'd ever wanted anything in his life. He wanted to wash every single thing about this day off himself. But he couldn't make himself move; he couldn't even decide whether he was afraid to find out it wouldn't help, wouldn't make him feel any cleaner, or whether he just couldn't convince himself he deserved it.

He didn't have to worry about avoiding Joey, he thought. Joey would almost certainly do it for him. So when someone came in, steady firm steps that weren't Tammy's, Mitch figured it had to be Ray.

And then he looked up and froze instantly, because it wasn't Ray.

It was Joey.

He'd changed clothes. His hair was neat again, not the same way it had looked after—after. Maybe _he'd_ taken a shower. Mitch kind of hoped so; if he'd found a way to clean Mitch off him, to stop feeling Mitch all over him, that was good.

Mitch drew a breath, because he suddenly needed one, and looked away.

It didn't help. Joey was staring at him. He could feel it. He didn't want to look up; but he had to, he thought. What right did he have to dodge Joey? He was the one who—who'd—

He bit down on the inside of his cheek and made himself meet Joey's eyes. Joey watched him do it, impassive, frigid. And then, deliberate, Joey's lip curled into a sneer.

"Well?" he snapped.

Mitch didn't know what he was expecting. "Are you—okay?" he said.

It came out halting. He didn't particularly want to piss Joey off, though maybe it would be for the best if he did—if he gave Joey an excuse to be furious with him that had nothing to do with that room, that didn't mean acknowledging anything that had happened inside it. And it was a stupid question, it sounded stupid coming out of his mouth and it felt stupid to ask it, but if he'd—if he'd _hurt_ Joey, would Joey have told his doctor? Mitch didn't know, couldn't even begin to guess.

Joey jerked like Mitch had hit him, the sneer faltering. "Jesus fucking Christ, McDeere," he managed, after a second, lifting his chin. "I'm not made of glass."

Then it was Mitch's turn to flinch. No, Joey wasn't made of glass. The furthest thing from it: he'd been warm, strong, tense and fierce and barely reinable, under Mitch.

And Mitch couldn't help but think that Joey hadn't _moved_ like it had hurt him. He knew it didn't—it didn't really mean anything, that Joey had taken it the way he had, that Joey had come; but god, it had been _hot_. It shouldn't have been, he hated that it had been and he hated himself for feeling that way, but there it was. And remembering doing it—remembering that there was even a fraction of him that had _wanted_ to do it—made his stomach roll all over again.

He got a grip on himself, swallowed and squared his shoulders and made himself say, "Joey, I—I'm sorry. God, I'm so—"

He stopped. Joey was staring at him—really staring this time, brow furrowed.

"You aren't going to tell anybody," Joey said.

It wasn't a question; he said it like it was a conclusion he'd already come to, and one that surprised him. But Mitch couldn't help but tense up, because what the hell? "No," he said sharply. "No, of course not. Joey—"

He was too late. Joey already had the sneer pinned back in place. "And you're _sorry_ ," Joey repeated. "Wow. I've got to tell you, Mitch, you didn't seem too sorry while you were doing it."

Jesus. Mitch wanted to shout at him, to ask him why the fuck he always had to be such an asshole; but he knew it was half because he was tired, trembling, half because he despised himself at least as much as Joey probably did and he wanted any excuse he could get to turn that feeling in another direction. He caught the words on his tongue, bit them back. "You're right," he said instead. "That's not what I meant. I'm sorry it happened. But I'm not sorry it was me. I had the choice, and I made it, and if I had to make it again, it would come out the same way. I couldn't have—" He ground to a halt, throat closing on him unexpectedly, breath short.

Because it was the truth. As unbearable as this felt, as much as he was struggling with this and as sick as it made him, it was a thousand times better than the alternative would've been. Even thinking about it, about what those four Russians might have done to Joey if Mitch hadn't—god, he couldn't stand it.

It was worth it. Even at this price, at the price of his self-respect and his sense of integrity, his ability to look himself in the mirror—it was worth it, to have prevented that, and he couldn't pretend otherwise.

Something in him settled, under the weight of that understanding. And abruptly he wasn't afraid anymore. Joey could do whatever he needed to do, say whatever he needed to say, and Mitch would accept it, was resigned to it. But he couldn't have done anything else.

"I couldn't have let them," he heard himself say. "I couldn't have sat back and let that happen to you. You can hate me for it if you have to, but it's true."

He expected—he didn't know what he expected. For Joey to be pissed, to shout at him, to mock him and his precious ethical standards, to tell him he was as dirty, as much a criminal, as any Morolto lieutenant.

But Joey just stood there and looked at him. Mitch could see his mouth working; his eyes were strange, bright.

"Fuck you," he said at last. "How fucking dare you."

"Joey—"

"I wish you had," Joey spat, hoarse and venomous. "I _wish you had_ , goddamn you," but it wasn't—he wasn't angry after all. Mitch came up off the couch, reached for him without thinking; it was kneejerk, the mindless impulse to try to cover an open wound.

"Joey," he said again, low, tentative. He'd missed something, he realized dimly. He must have missed something.

"Don't," Joey bit out, and Mitch stopped short. "Don't _ever_ touch me again, McDeere."

And then he turned on his heel, and left.

* * *

Mitch kept his word.

He didn't tell anyone. It was almost a relief, to have at least one thing he could do for Joey, one thing Joey had asked him for that he could give in place of the apology he couldn't.

Ray knew that there was something wrong, something Mitch hadn't told him about what Karpov had wanted. But he didn't know what, and Mitch wasn't going to help him figure it out. Tammy had guessed, too, either because of the way Mitch was acting or because of the way Ray was acting. But she was kind enough not to push—she just looked at him with worried eyes now and then, brought him coffee sometimes when normally she'd have rolled her eyes and asked him whether he could get it himself, or were his arms broken.

No one else had any idea.

It made the memory feel thin, liminal. Unreal, almost, as if it were something he'd made up, a dream he'd had—vivid, but without substance. He worked Patrick's case, went to court, made objections and lodged motions; updated Sal, because Joey wasn't speaking to him, hadn't even been in the same room with him in a week. He talked to Ray, smiled at Tammy, nodded at Joey's guys politely when he passed them in the building or on the street outside. And he did it all from an odd sort of distance, looking at them like he was a step away from himself; because they were all acting like it hadn't happened, and of course as far as they were concerned, it hadn't, even though sometimes it was like it was the only thing in his head, the only thing he could think about.

But then it would happen: he'd glance down a hallway just as Joey was coming out of a doorway, or look up just as Joey was coming down the stairs to the restaurant's main floor, Sal and five other men on his heels. And for a fraction of an instant, Joey's eyes would meet his, pale and opaque, unreadable, and Mitch knew he hadn't imagined anything.

He probably should have been grateful. Ignoring him was hardly the worst thing Joey could've done to him in return.

Except it felt like it was. It felt like being slowly strangled, suffocated by merciless degrees. The only time he was real, the only time anyone was looking at him and seeing what was really there, was in those split seconds of Joey's eyes on him.

They couldn't keep going like this. There had to be something Joey wanted, some pound of flesh he could take from Mitch that would—that would at least make it possible for him to be angry, to hate Mitch, _anything_. Anything other than this frigid distant silence.

And it made sense, in a Joey Morolto kind of way. That he would need Mitch to ask for it. Mitch had been used to punish him, to hurt him, and there had been nothing he could do about it; anything less than perfect control of the opportunity to punish Mitch in turn wouldn't be enough to even begin making up for that.

But that was all right. Mitch could handle it. And whatever it was Joey was going to demand of him—if he wanted to hit Mitch, tie him to a chair and beat his face in, shoot at him again or even shoot him outright—it would be a fraction of what Mitch deserved, for doing what he'd done and not even managing to be sorry for it; and it would be better than this.

His timing was more blind luck than anything. He could never have asked Sal to help him plan this in advance. He just walked up to Joey's office, heart squeezed in his chest, feeling resigned and—and grimly protective, inside-out, because Joey needed this and couldn't give it to himself, couldn't ask for it, and Mitch was going to do it for him.

Which was exactly the kind of idiotic attitude that had gotten him into this mess, he thought with distant ruefulness, and then he was there.

And the door was open.

A handful of men in dark suits, a woman in a tasteful pale dress, were just leaving, casting Mitch incurious glances as they went. Joey was sitting back behind his desk, watching them go, and in the moment before he noticed Mitch, when he thought no one was looking at him, the expression on his face flickered to a strange bitter exhaustion, mouth pressed into a line, jaw tight.

Then he did notice Mitch, and it was gone instantly, replaced by a hard flat sneer.

"What the hell are you doing?" he snapped, as Mitch stepped through the door. "Get out."

"No," Mitch said, as calmly as he could manage, and then he caught the door and closed it behind him. Joey probably wouldn't want an audience for this; and even Sal never opened the door to Joey's office when it was closed.

He stopped there for a second, bracing himself. He'd told himself that this would be straightforward, that it wouldn't be difficult—and it shouldn't be. All he had to do was piss Joey off, give him a reason to do whatever it was he already wanted to do to Mitch, and even if it never fixed this, even if nothing could, at least it would change something. It had to, it _had_ to. They couldn't go on like this.

But at the same time, he didn't want to do it. Maybe if he kept his peace, steered clear of Joey and waited long enough, everything would be fine. They'd both learn how to pretend nothing had ever happened, and wouldn't that be the same as if it hadn't, in every way that mattered?

The thought was almost tempting. Except Mitch had never been able to live that way, and he was pretty sure Joey hadn't either.

If he'd ever been any good at closing his eyes, he'd have done it when he worked for Bendini, Lambert, & Locke. He'd have kept his job, made all the money he could handle off Joey Morolto Sr. and spent it with a smile, and he'd never have gone into witness protection in the first place.

He couldn't. It wasn't in him.

He looked at Joey, and he said it again: "No. I'm not going anywhere."

Joey's face twisted. He came up out of his chair, and his whole body was strung tight as wire, every line of him sharp and furious. He flattened his hands against his desk, as if to emphasize that there was almost three feet of dark gleaming hardwood between them, that Mitch couldn't reach him without trying. "I've got nothing to say to you, McDeere," he gritted out.

"Too bad," Mitch said, with steadiness he didn't feel.

He'd had a vague idea of coming up with something about the case, something that had struck him as objectionable or unethical; that had always gotten Joey riled up before, that unspoken assertion that Mitch had standards he didn't meet. And of course it would work even better after Mitch had—had—

But he didn't have a chance to get that far. Suddenly Joey was moving, rounding the desk, eyes bright and furious and mouth a vicious pale line in his face. He reached out and caught Mitch not even by the lapels of his suit jacket but by the front of his shirt, and Mitch had half a second to catch his breath before Joey knocked it out of him again, shoving him backwards into the closed door and following him as he went.

" _Fuck_ you," Joey said, harsh, voice cracking.

He couldn't have telegraphed it more clearly, the way he brought his hand up, the way it was already curled into a fist. Mitch didn't move, and Joey hit him once, again, again, a hot explosion of pain that throbbed his way through his jaw, his teeth, the back of his head where it struck the door behind him.

It hurt like hell.

And then it stopped. Not the pain, but the blows. Mitch sucked in a ragged breath, felt blood on his chin and discovered distantly his lip had split.

"Is that what you wanted? Huh?" Joey was hissing into his ear. "You feel better now? You think we're even now? You think that makes it right?"

"No," Mitch heard himself say. "No. Of course I don't." He felt abruptly on the edge of hysteria, on the edge of every single ugly thing he'd been shoving down bursting out of him at once, as if he might sob or scream or throw himself out a window. He was dizzy, and his mouth was still blazing with hurt, and he didn't know what the fuck he was doing. "Joey—"

" _Shut up_ ," Joey spat, pulling Mitch a couple inches away from the door just to shove him back into it again, onehanded. With the other hand, the hand he'd used to hit Mitch, he was reaching down, almost clumsy, for his own waist—for the back of it, arm sliding under his own jacket. For—

For the gun he kept there, tucked away in his waistband.

Mitch understood it a second before it happened, a second before Joey actually drew the gun out where he could see it. Everything seemed to go clear, glass-edged, details crisp in the edges of his vision.

He drew a shuddering breath, and still didn't move.

He'd known this was a possibility. He'd told himself it wasn't too much to ask, wasn't more than he owed Joey. Funny, in a way, that Joey had wanted him dead for so long; that now, at last, Mitch agreed with him.

Joey pointed it at him, eyes huge and pale, and his other hand loosened in Mitch's shirt, still resting there, lingering, a parody of tenderness. "Down," he said, quiet, sharp.

He backed off a half-step, gave Mitch room to do it, and Mitch did it: sank clumsily, awkwardly, to his knees on the floor of Joey's office.

Joey looked calm, icy, but his throat was working, and his breath caught audibly in the back of it. And then he moved again—he'd kept the gun pointed at Mitch, following Mitch down, but now he shifted it, pressed the mouth of it deliberately to the center of Mitch's forehead.

Mitch didn't flinch. He didn't do anything, didn't say anything.

Joey didn't shoot him. He just stood there, staring down at Mitch, the gun steady in his hand, face strained, breath quick.

And then he swallowed hard, and the gun moved.

The mouth of it trailed sideways, across Mitch's brow, toward his temple and then—and then over it, down the side of his face, his cheek. It was sleek, deadly-looking, the barrel polished and gleaming like chrome; utterly unignorable, bright in the edge of Mitch's vision.

And then it crossed to the corner of Mitch's mouth, brushed the swollen bloody curve of his lip, and jesus, no. No, he was—he wasn't thinking straight, he'd lost his mind. Joey wasn't—Joey couldn't possibly _want_ —

"You think you got me fooled?" Joey said, and his voice was low and hoarse, scraping through Mitch in a way that almost made him shudder. "You think you got me right where you want me, you don't need to pay what I'm owed."

Mitch couldn't think. His heart was pounding. He didn't know what the hell was happening; he didn't know what Joey meant.

"I shoot you in the face," Joey went on, almost gently, "that's it. One and done. Two seconds, if I aim it right. Minute or two, if I don't. You think that's enough? That's not what you did, McDeere. That's not an eye for an eye. That isn't going to make us square." He tilted his head; Mitch could see his pulse racing at the base of his throat, between the sides of his crisp open collar. He hadn't taken his eyes off Mitch, not for a second, and there was something new in them, something strange and almost frantic, something ravenous. "Only one thing," Joey added unevenly, "that will," and then he pressed, just a little. Nudged.

It hurt, sent a sharp flare of pain through the split in Mitch's lip.

Jesus, he couldn't—but apparently he did.

Mitch screwed his eyes shut, relaxed his jaw, and let the mouth of Joey's gun slide over his lip.

Joey pushed, sudden, without warning, shoving half the barrel in. Mitch let it happen, opened his mouth for it, cold metal pressing its way in over his tongue—cold metal and something else, a faint bitter taste, because this was a gun Joey had actually used, had actually fired, and if he squeezed the trigger right now there wouldn't be a single goddamn thing Mitch could do about it.

Joey made an odd sound, frustrated, and his other hand curled into Mitch's hair, gripped tight and twisted, turning Mitch's face up toward him. He pulled the gun away, and then put it back, pushed it deeper into Mitch's mouth; it felt huge, unyielding, and Mitch choked a little, throat squeezing for a painful suffocating second around the mouth of it, tears stinging involuntarily in the corners of his eyes.

And then suddenly it was gone. Mitch sucked in a breath, coughed half of it back out, and risked a glance: Joey was staring down at him, and he didn't look so pale, so icily furious, anymore. There was heat creeping into his cheeks.

"Jesus," he said, "you've got to be fucking kidding me."

He hadn't loosened his grip on Mitch's hair.

He was going to do it, Mitch thought. Turn the tables, precisely, exactly. He was going to push Mitch down onto the floor, and shove his slacks down, and fuck him. An eye for an eye.

His spine went hot, and then cold. He couldn't figure out how to breathe.

What spectacular goddamn timing. What a moment to realize he'd—he'd let it happen, he'd want it to, if only Joey did. If only Joey _actually_ wanted to, wanted it for its own sake and not because it was the only way he felt like he could get back at Mitch.

And that wasn't how this was going to go. Joey was going to do it to hurt him, and it was going to work; it was going to hurt him more than Joey even understood.

But Joey had been hurt first. And if this was what he said he needed, if this was what was going to make him feel like he could bear what Mitch had done to him, then Mitch could hardly claim it was too much to ask.

So when Joey put the gun in his mouth again, gripped his head and worked it in and out like he was fucking Mitch's face with it, Mitch closed his eyes and allowed it, unresisting. When Joey pulled it out, moved away and set it down on the desk, Mitch didn't move, didn't get up. Joey came back to him where he was still kneeling, looked down at him and then gripped his jaw—slid his thumb, two fingers, where the gun had been, while he undid his belt with the other hand, and Mitch didn't try to stop him.

Mitch hadn't sucked anyone's cock in a long time. Not since college, law school, years before he'd met Abby. But he knew how to do it, and if anybody had the right to make him, it was Joey.

Joey was hard. That was a relief. Not just because it made Mitch's job easier; because it was a comfort, twisted up and inside out, that at least he really was getting something out of this. At least Mitch holding him down and fucking him on Karpov's orders hadn't ruined sex for him forever.

He didn't make a sound while Mitch was sucking him off. The grip of his hand, back in Mitch's hair again, eased and tensed, eased and tensed.

And then he said, "Fuck," on a harsh exhale, and dragged Mitch's mouth off him.

He slid his hand down to the nape of Mitch's neck, gripped the collar of Mitch's shirt and suit jacket, and tugged a little. Mitch felt disoriented, clumsy, trying belatedly to respond—to stand up. His knees ached, tingled. The floor of Joey's office was hardwood, without carpeting.

But it was fine. Whatever Joey wanted, whatever Joey needed, he could have it. Mitch would let him take it.

"Come on," Joey said, quick, biting the words out like they stung.

Mitch blinked.

Joey looked—he didn't know what to call the way Joey looked. There had only been a dusting of color in his face before, just enough to make it obvious something else was getting the better of the anger, that cold vicious fury that had been driving him at first. But now his cheeks were hot, his ears, and he wasn't looking at Mitch anymore. He still had a hand on Mitch, curled at the edge of Mitch's collar, thumb at the side of Mitch's throat.

"Come on," Joey said again, and then, incomprehensible, bewildering, "Do it again."

Mitch stared at him.

Joey met his eyes, for an instant, as if he didn't understand why Mitch wasn't moving. And then something flashed across his face, that same cold turbulent fury, and just that fast he'd turned his hand, shoved Mitch away from him.

Mitch stumbled, caught himself, recovered and closed the distance again, without looking away. "Joey," he said slowly.

"Fuck you," Joey sneered. "Don't fucking touch me. Didn't I tell you, McDeere? Don't _fucking_ —"

He reached out, shoved Mitch again, but this time Mitch was ready, braced for it. He swayed with the pressure of Joey's hands, waited out that burst of strength and then pushed back, and they fumbled a step together and then Joey came up against the edge of the desk, Mitch caging him in, holding him there. Joey made a ragged sound, tried to grip Mitch's jacket, and Mitch caught his wrist—it was easy to do, suddenly, every inch of him awake—and forced it back, twisted it behind him and pinned it there.

Joey sucked in a breath, unmistakable, and his body was tense, bowed back just a little, straining.

But he was still hard, his slacks still open, his cock pressing in a hot thick line against Mitch's hip.

"Joey," Mitch said, barely more than a whisper.

Joey didn't move. They stayed like that, for a long, taut moment.

Joey still had one hand out, palm spread over Mitch's chest; Mitch reached up with his free hand, slow, easy to avoid, and gripped Joey's wrist. Dragged it down, Joey's hand stuttering along, catching in his shirt—pushed it behind Joey, next to the other, and kept it there.

As if, almost, Joey were cuffed to the desk.

Joey twisted in his grasp. Testing, Mitch thought. He wasn't shouting at Mitch, wasn't biting him, hadn't kicked him. He was testing, pushing a little, the skin of his wrists hot and soft and thin under Mitch's fingers, the muscles in his arms tight and tense.

"Joey—"

Joey wouldn't look at him. His face was flushed, now; he'd caught his lip in his teeth, dug in so deep the indents went pale for a second when he finally let it go.

"Come on," Joey said, and he'd switched gears, Mitch understood instantly, his tone a taunt instead of an order. "Come on, you son of a bitch. I know you want to. You fucking loved it, didn't you? Come on—"

Because Mitch had been right after all. He couldn't ask. He couldn't ask, not for this. He was trying to get what he wanted, what he needed, the only way he could figure out how to let himself have it.

Mitch closed his eyes, steadied himself. He remembered thinking, the day it had happened, in the evening when Joey had come to him, that he'd missed something. Something important, something crucial. Something that made sense out of the way Joey had looked at him, the anger that hadn't been there and the desperate agony that had.

He'd gotten it now, he was almost sure of it. All the pieces had fallen into place at once: Joey hadn't been able to look at him, hadn't been in the same room with him, because Joey hadn't trusted that he wouldn't give himself away. Joey had shouted at him, had told Mitch never to touch him again, because he hadn't known what the hell he might do if Mitch had.

Which had been fair enough, considering the position they were in right now.

But Mitch couldn't afford to be wrong about this. If he screwed this up now, if he'd missed a turn somewhere in the tangled fucking maze of Joey's head, there was no guarantee he would ever be able to fix it.

"Joey," he said, quietly, carefully.

Joey went still in his arms—tenser, warier, than he had been when Mitch had first trapped his wrists.

"Don't. Just get the fuck out, jesus—"

"No," Mitch said.

Joey's jaw went tense. "McDeere," he said, without looking up.

Mitch didn't let him finish. "I work for you, Joey. I work for you, I moved into your building. I did the worst thing I've ever done because I thought it was the only way to help you, and ten minutes ago I almost let you shoot me in the head. Whatever it is you think I'm going to say, however it is you think I'm going to use this against you, you're wrong."

Joey tried on a sneer for size. It didn't fit him as well as usual. "I don't know what the fuck you think you're talking about," he said unsteadily.

"I'm not trying to get one over on you. I'm not trying to take anything from you. I've been trying to get the hell out of your business for months. _You're_ the one who put me in the middle of it. You think Patrick Walker is your future, your way out, and I'm the only person in the world you trust to save him."

Joey's throat worked. He didn't speak.

"And if you think you're the only one who's fucked up about this," Mitch added, soft and hoarse, "you're wrong."

He didn't kiss Joey's mouth. Not right away. That wasn't going to make his point. That wasn't going to tell Joey how bad it was, how thoroughly every part of Mitch was caught. He'd thought it was crossing a line, surrendering himself, to move into Joey's fucking building. He'd had no idea how wrong he was.

He held Joey there instead, kept Joey's wrists where they were and leaned in, just far enough to press his mouth to the ball of Joey's shoulder.

Joey'd shrugged his suit jacket off, but his shirt was still on, two buttons open and that was all. It was a stupid, ridiculous, incredibly telling place to put a kiss.

"What the hell," Joey said.

He stopped short when Mitch moved—shifted an inch along the line of his collarbone, standing out under the cloth because of the way his arms were trapped behind him, and pressed his mouth there, too.

"What the hell are you doing, McDeere," Joey managed, but he didn't make it a question; his voice wavered, dropping instead of rising, scraping in the back of his throat, when he said Mitch's name.

Maybe this, Mitch thought distantly, had been the right thing all along. Maybe this had always been the thing he needed to give up to Joey, the thing that would open him up to Joey the way he'd forced Joey open for him.

So Joey wanted Mitch to fuck him again; fine. What Mitch wanted from Joey, the helpless straining feeling that had made it so impossible to bear his silence, to bear being away from him or ignored by him, had to be worse than that, even in Joey's mafia man's-man scoring system.

He undid another of Joey's buttons, another, pushed the shoulder of Joey's shirt out of his way and touched his mouth to skin. The base of Joey's throat, the underside of his jaw—and Joey wasn't asking him questions anymore, wasn't trying to. He'd let his head fall back, his breath fast and harsh, shuddering; and then he surged against Mitch, brought his head back up and turned his face into Mitch's and found Mitch's mouth.

His mouth was hard, closed. He wasn't gentle about it. It was more like a punch than a kiss. It was—

It was ready to be met with an equal and opposite reaction. It was ready for a fist, ready for a shove. It was ready, still, to be pushed away.

Mitch didn't push Joey away. He stayed there and he took it, waiting, and when Joey twisted away, Mitch followed him; didn't chase the pressure itself, let their mouths part, but he didn't let Joey avoid him, closed the distance before Joey could force it open, and kissed him again.

"Fuck you," Joey said into his mouth, ragged.

And Mitch knew what he meant by it, and felt his breath catch in his throat.

"It's okay," he said, when he could. "Joey—it's okay."

"You don't know what the fuck you're talking about," Joey said, but it was—he murmured the words against Mitch's jaw.

"I'm not going to fuck you over," Mitch said, equally quiet. "I'm not leaving. I'm going to help you. I'm going to help you get out," and Joey shivered all over, made a strained sweet sound and gave in to his grasp: unbound, surrendering.


End file.
